The Pi Penthouse: DIY accommodations for Raspberry Pi and Peripherals

07 Dec 2017

My main issue with most Raspberry Pi cases is that they only contain the Pi itself. I want a fat hard drive, which in turn requires an external power supply. Most Raspi setups are necessarily a rat’s nest. So, here’s what you need to do to end up with a sweet setup like mine:

See that the Pi on top is secured with tacks, the power supply with tacks, and the 1TB hard drive by friction from two adjacent boards.

You will need:

To make the wooden supports, first buy a long, thin board. Mine was 3.5” wide, 0.25” thick.

I cut the board into 5.75” sections, vicing them together to sand them good. (I made two penthouses, each with four boards.)

I drilled them while still stuck together to ensure that the long bolts I bought would cooperate when pushed through. Take care to not mix them up.

Next I needed to cut the bolts to a reasonable size. I put my wire cutters into the vice grip to get the required oomph to cut the bolts. A hacksaw would have been safer.

After that, assembly is as easy as putting a nut on either side of every board. Start with the bottom, get the nuts and boards in the right order, and worry about spacing them the way you want afterwards. Here’s the foundation, with electrical tape on bottom to prevent surface scratching.

I made one Penthouse for the TV, and one for the desk. The one by the TV has for a remote a $15 wireless mouse/keyboard combo from Ebay, and has a bigger hard drive for all my movies and music. The desk Pi takes a regular keyboard, mouse, monitor, and speakers.

One could stack up multiple hard drives or even multiple Pis. This is a cheap, flexible solution that will do the job and make your setup look awesome.